Simple tutorial on how to upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10 from Ubuntu 12.04 and older versions.

Few days ago we wrote what’s new in Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha 2 and you can already download and test this version, but I would not recommend using it on your main machine as this is early development version and may contain bugs. If you want to upgrade your current Ubuntu version to Ubuntu 12.10 I will help you with detailed instructions.

Ubuntu 12.10 offers many behind the scene improvements and upgrades as well as plenty of new versions of defaults Ubuntu apps. Ubuntu 12.10 recently reached Alpha 2 version and is still 4 months away from its official release on October so much more to follow.

While it’s perfectly safe to upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10 without losing data I would strongly recommend to backup your data before you get started.

I have tested this upgrade method on Ubuntu 10.04, 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04 so nothing can go wrong during the process.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10 from Ubuntu 12.04 or older (Desktop Upgrade)

To get started press Alt + F2 buttons on your keyboard to open command prompt. When it opens, run the fallowing command and press Enter to open update manager. Please note that simply opening update manager won’t work.

update-manager -d

Now open Settings as you can see on screenshot bellow

On “Notify me of a new Ubuntu version” select “For any new version”, this will show any Ubuntu alpha and beta versions on Update Manager

Now hit “Close” and return to Update manager and hit “Check” to start checking for updates. Sometimes it won’t show upgrade options, so just close Update Manager and reopen and it should work.

Now you will see notification “New Ubuntu release ‘12.10’ is available”, so hit “Upgrade” button on the right side of the notification to get started.

That’s it, now you can enjoy Ubuntu 12.10 upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04

Ubuntu 12.10 Server Upgrade:

To upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 on a server system to Ubuntu 12.10 you should take following steps:

Install the “update-manager-core” package if it is not already installed on your system:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core

Edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades file and set Prompt=normal;

Now Launch the Ubuntu upgrade tool with the fallowing command

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

Fallow on-screen instruction to upgrade your server to Ubuntu 12.10

Please not that Ubuntu 12.10 is still in early alpha version and it’s not recommended to use it on your main machine. This version is for testing purpose only.